Marianne Wheeldon
Yale University

Mallarmé's poetry often introduces such fragmented syntax that an understanding of the text depends upon a non-linear reading. In moments of syntactic ambiguity, for example, the reader must cast forward and back for possible associations in meaning and syntax, and then is often required to reread previous material in light of these newly-acquired associations. Whereas in Un coup de dès (Mallarmé's last-published work) the non-linear reading is made explicit by the non linear presentation of the text, in the more traditional forms of Mallarmé's earlier poems, the same result is achieved by studiously-fragmented syntax.

Both Boulez and Debussy worked with Mallarmé's refractory syntax: Debussy in his setting of Mallarmé's Soupir and Boulez with his creation of permutational forms, which are directly influenced by Mallarmé's Un coup de dès. Whereas Boulez was able to go much further in his imitation of Un coup de dès with the various permutations of the piano Sonata no. 3, Debussy's static and non-teleological harmonies perhaps inherently possess the free-associating, non-linear strategies of Mallarmé's Soupir. With harmonic motion that is slow-moving and non-teleological, and voice-leading that is closely-knit, the harmonies of Debussy's Soupir present a densely-woven network of association among the six sections of the song. Thus, the sections of Soupir are capable of being performed in different permutations due to an overwhelming surfeit of linear connections.

The musical analyses of Soupir attempt to show that both Mallarmé's poem and Debussy's setting are motivated by similar principles of formal flexibility and potential multiple readings. Just as in Mallarmé's poem -- where the reader must cast about for all possible associations in meaning and syntax -- so in the harmonic and linear fabric of the song, connections are multiple, tenuous, and not necessarily successive. By pushing the connection between Soupir and Boulez's Piano Sonata no. 3 to its analytic extreme, the permutational possibilities of Debussy's Soupir invoke the "atmosphere of multiple potentiality" created by the fragmented syntax of Mallarmé's Soupir.